[7] The Honeymooners was a series spun off in 1955–1956 from sketches of the same name that aired on The Jackie Gleason Show, an hour-long variety program (1952–1955).
More recently, Clueless had reasonable success in syndication, especially on cable, even though only 62 episodes had been produced by the time the series ended in 1999.
Series which have entered the public domain, such as Dusty's Trail, Meet Corliss Archer, and Life with Elizabeth are sometimes aired regardless of the number of episodes because there is no licensing fee.
Shows that are approaching the 88-episode syndication milestone while suffering from poor ratings are often moved to graveyard slots on Friday or Saturday in order to burn off remaining episodes.
An extreme example of a show renewed primarily for syndication purposes was 'Til Death, which was pulled from Fox's lineup just seven episodes into its third season, after it had fallen out of the top 100 in the primetime ratings.
[16] Cancellation seemed imminent, but the show was renewed for a fourth season after Sony Pictures Entertainment offered Fox a discount on the licensing fee.
The overlapped seasons led to some comical confusion, because four different actresses played the part of Allison Stark during this span of episodes.
[22][23] The 100-episode threshold is generally applied solely to scripted prime time programming, since sitcoms and dramas are the most prevalent in syndicated reruns.
and Wheel of Fortune, which have produced thousands of episodes over their runs of 35 or more years in syndication as of 2019, offers a package of reruns (with the former using the title Daytime Jeopardy!)
[26] With the advent of cable channels such as Game Show Network, the subchannel network Buzzr, and advertising-supported linear video services such as Pluto TV, rerunning game shows has become more common; for instance, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, which lasted one season and 225 episodes in syndication during the 2007-08 season, ran continuously for several years thereafter, originally in syndication and later on RTV.
A dedicated channel generally requires more than 100 episodes for optimal rotation, since a series of that length will begin repeating within less than three days; Pluto's Jeopardy!
For weekly series, this practice dates to at least the 1960s, when Saturday morning cartoons would, after the end of their 13-week run, begin rerunning continuously for about a year (usually four runs/year) until being replaced by the next show, either new or archival.
This also meant that cancellations of children's programming was extremely rare; because of the long lead time to produce a cartoon, networks usually bought a full season of a show before it began airing, meaning that it would be far too late to have any appreciable financial benefit by ending it.